Tricky Wife, Tricky Life: Catherine Lacey’s Biography of X
There is something about Manhattan’s art, music, and to a lesser extent literature in the 70s and 80s that has stuck for many of Lacey’s age and younger. That would be Mapplethorpe, Patti Smith, Sontag, Kathy Acker, Vito Acconci, Basquiat, etc. It’s not only the fashionable and the cerebral but the seedy too, all within one borough, and within one life: X, as was Acker, is briefly involved in a Times Square sex show called Fun City. The nostalgia, or just simple longing, affects Biography of X, and Lacey exploits it too, giving gossip about Richard Serra, reconstructing a session at Electric Lady with Tom Waits with X as producer, and taking her to readings (with heckling!) at St. Mark’s bookshop.
Kazuo Robinson reviews Catherine Lacey‘s Biography of X.